But the Rain
by Konstantya
Summary: In which Folken takes a bath, Zongi fanboys, and the whole thing is quite a bit more somber and depressing than this summary probably makes it out to be.


General Note: I'm only going to reformat my fics so much when this site is the one at fault. So if the formatting is weird, please check out my profile for more info. Thank you.

A/N: Takes place sometime before the beginning of the series, but as far as when, specifically, well, your guess is as good as mine.

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**But the Rain  
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He is always struck by the beauty of Lord Folken's body. The tall frame, the well-proportioned limbs, the sculpted muscles. Most of the other sorcerers only pursue activities that exercise the mind, but Lord Folken seems to like to keep his body just as finely-honed as his brain.

He has just returned from a sparring session, slightly winded, his hair damp with sweat, and unclasps the sword from around his hips. Zongi takes it, along with his already-folded cloak, and sets them off to the side while Lord Folken begins to shed the rest of his clothing. A bath is ready and waiting for him. Zongi has seen to that.

He has watched Lord Folken spar sometimes, practically mesmerized by the grace of the man's form, the arc of his long limbs with each parry and thrust. It is like watching a dance, and there is an elegance to Lord Folken's movements that would not be out of place in a palace ballroom, Zongi thinks. (Not that Zaibach bothers with ballrooms, but other countries do, and Lord Folken is handsome enough in face and athletic enough in figure that Zongi is sure he could be a veritable sensation on the dance-floor, if he ever so chose to apply himself there.)

In fact, Zongi thinks, perhaps the only thing that mars the man's physical perfection is the mechanical contraption that comprises his right arm.

It is bothering him today. As he peels off his uniform, he rotates the joint, and Zongi has seen him put his organic hand to the shoulder more than once since the day began. Sometimes even a tightness flickers about his mouth—not quite a wince, but a hint of something like it. As he slides into the steaming water, he breathes—it isn't quite a sigh—and presses the fingers of his left hand along the line of his collarbone, as if trying to relieve tension.

He could get it taken care of, if he so desired. If knotted muscles are indeed what is ailing him. There are parlors where perfumed ladies will put their hands on you and ease your arms, your shoulders, your back. There are parlors where they will ease even more. But Lord Folken has never visited such a place in all the time Zongi has been fortunate enough to know him, and it seems unlikely that that will change anytime soon. Lord Folken is a very private person, Zongi has learned.

Sometimes, Zongi thinks to offer his own services in that regard. He has never massaged the stiffness out of a pair of shoulders, but he is sure he could learn how. _Would_ learn how, if Lord Folken were to ask it. Is quite sure he would learn _anything_, _could_ learn anything, so long as Lord Folken is the one to ask it.

Zongi shifts, anxiously. "Would you care for some wine, lord?"

Lord Folken blinks at the question, and seems to think about it for an instant longer than necessary. "Yes, please," he says. And when Zongi hands him the goblet, he murmurs, "Thank you."

Lord Folken is the first man to have ever said "please" to him. The first man to have ever said "thank you."

Zongi thinks back to the words. To the hesitation and almost bewilderment before their delivery, specifically. It is very subtle, but Zongi has been around Lord Folken long enough to recognize it. The slightest pause here; a blink there. As if some part of him is vaguely surprised to be on the receiving end of such consideration, no matter how often Zongi shows it. It is a curious thing. Something that draws a parallel between them, even more so than the mechanical arm that advertises a tragedy sometime in his past.

Lord Folken had no manservant when he brought Zongi under his wing. Despite his noble bearing and his position of authority within Zaibach, it seems he has _never_ had a manservant. Which is a shame, as far as Zongi is concerned; in his humble opinion, Lord Folken is one of the few men who _deserves_ to have someone wait on him hand and foot.

Zongi corks the wine bottle and sets it off to the side. Lord Folken rarely has more than one glass at a time, and never more than two. _Moderation_, he says, as if he knows something about the dangers of excess. Zongi can't help but admire him for that. He is a man who has been down a dark road, and emerged with his head held high and his faith firm.

Lord Folken drinks his wine leisurely, never one to hurry or _be_ hurried, and Zongi admires that about him, too. There is something about him, something about his air and deportment that commands respect, reverence, loyalty, and perhaps, Zongi thinks, even love. When Lord Folken is done, Zongi takes his glass, and gathers the soap and washrags. Again, Lord Folken rotates his right shoulder.

Zongi settles behind him, fingers digging into the dry fibers of the one cloth while Lord Folken begins to wash his arm and chest with the other. Zongi hesitates, thinking the question teasing his tongue to be impertinent, but concern (curiosity?) overrides his reticence. "…Does it hurt, my lord? Your arm, I mean." Zongi thinks it must, though he has never heard Lord Folken complain about it before. But he can see the way it connects to the body, can see the way the metal fuses into flesh, and cannot help but imagine it aches or pinches or is otherwise uncomfortable in _some_ way or another.

"Sometimes," Lord Folken admits. "When the weather is bad, like today."

It has been raining all morning. A steady, incessant percussion against the cement and steel of the city. In a month, two at the most, the rain will turn to snow, and the grey streets will be buried in the white death of winter.

Zongi dips the cloth into the bath water. Lathers it with soap and begins the not-entirely-unpleasant task of scrubbing Lord Folken's back. Works carefully around the ragged scar tissue peeking out from the steel plates of his shoulder and tries not to stare.

"If…" Zongi starts, but immediately trails off. Lord Folken respects him, in a way most other humans don't, but that does not exactly make them friends. Does not erase the lines of authority between them. Zongi is his servant—a willing one, but a servant all the same—and there are some questions servants do not ask their masters.

Not that that matters much to Lord Folken, because he pauses and prompts, polite as ever, "If?"

Zongi swallows, the show of courtesy bolstering his confidence. He focuses on soaping the man's back. "If…if you don't mind my asking, lord… How did you lose it?"

For a moment, there is silence, an uneasy tension that coils in Lord Folken's muscles, and Zongi freezes, suddenly worried he's said something terribly wrong, something that will get him thrown in the stocks, thrown back out onto the streets, back to a cruel world where there can be no help and no hope for him. He has seen the glares Lord Folken can give, cold and sharp as icicles, and futilely braces himself for the moment when the man will turn around and—

But then Lord Folken sighs, and the doppelgänger thinks it might just be the weariest sound he's ever heard. "Oh, Zongi," he says, his voice uncharacteristically soft and wistful. "Does it really matter?"

Zongi thinks back to his own tragedy. Does it really matter how the blade went in? That he used a sword not a spear? No matter what the details, his brother would still be dead, and it would still be his fault. No matter what the details, Lord Folken's arm would still be lost.

He resumes his lathering. "No," he says quietly. "I suppose it doesn't."

Silence falls on them after that—though not a very awkward one, Zongi is relieved to realize. He finishes scrubbing Lord Folken's back, and Lord Folken finishes scrubbing his body, and then the man leans back and lays his arms along the sides of the tub. Zongi puts away the soap and wrings out the washrags. Lord Folken is like this sometimes—sometimes wanting to savor the relaxing heat of a bath—and Zongi will wait. Be it an extra minute or an extra hour, Zongi will wait. Anything, he thinks, for Lord Folken.

"Do you know any songs, Zongi?"

The doppelgänger starts in surprise at the words. The question is so odd, so unexpected, he almost trips over his tongue. "Songs, my lord?"

"Songs," Lord Folken repeats, mildly, almost humorously. "Surely your tribe must have had some songs. Some musical culture."

No one has ever asked about his tribe's culture before now. No one has ever cared to know.

"We—had some lullabies, lord," he stutters out. They also had war chants, so many war chants, and the death chants to go with them, but Zongi doesn't mention those. He's trying to put those days behind him, after all.

A smile tugs very gently at the corners of Lord Folken's mouth. "It's terribly selfish of me to ask," he says, "but would you mind indulging me with one?"

It is not selfish at all, Zongi thinks. Not after what Lord Folken has done for him. Not after Lord Folken has _saved_ him, body and soul. However…

"I—I'm not much of a singer, lord," Zongi admits. It is not false modesty; it is the truth. He is not a very good singer. He is not a very _bad_ singer, but he is by no means the best. Lord Folken _deserves_ the best.

But as if he knows what Zongi's thinking, Lord Folken's smile grows, ever so slightly (and perhaps turns a little melancholy?—but that cannot be, Zongi thinks). "You won't disappoint me," he simply says. It could be a threat—from other men, _would_ be a threat—but from Lord Folken it is reassuring, encouraging, a promise of open arms and acceptance. Lord Folken has always been that way with him—always understanding, never judging. Such kindness made Zongi weep the first time they met. Now, it fortifies him. Makes his back straighter and his being lighter and reminds him that there is hope. There is fate and there is the future, and such things are not nearly as immutable as one might imagine.

Zongi sings.

Doppelgänger songs are different from human songs, full of trills and warbles and vocal undulations that humans might actually find impossible to reproduce. The lullaby is a simple one, that speaks of the stars and the moons and the summer sun. It is simple, and Zongi is no great singer, but there is a serenity that comes over Lord Folken's features all the same. An easing of the lines and the sharp planes of his face as he tilts his head back and closes his eyes, and for the first time in a long while (perhaps the first time ever?), Zongi feels a swell of pride for his heritage.

Upon the song's end, Lord Folken silently slips his head beneath the surface of the water. He emerges a few seconds later, breathing deeply, and runs a hand through his hair to shake the excess water from it. Zongi has a dressing gown ready, and when Lord Folken stands, he helps him shrug his arms into it. He offers Lord Folken a towel for his head, and with that same little blink of surprise and then that same little smile about his mouth, Lord Folken takes it. After a minute of toweling, his hair is mostly dry—the majority of it sticking up at odd angles, as it is wont to do—and Lord Folken looks at him, and even clasps him on the shoulder with his remaining real hand.

"What did I ever do to deserve you?" he asks—which is ironic, Zongi thinks, because he was just wondering the exact same thing.

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A/N: BUT CAN YOU JUST IMAGINE HOW JEALOUS NARIA AND ERIYA WOULD BE IF THEY FOUND OUT ZONGI HAD SEEN FOLKEN NAKED? I'm picturing fabulous catfights (no pun intended) between the three of them, which each of them trying to one-up the other: "I GOT TO HELP HIM BATHE." "OH, YEAH, WELL WE GOT TO GO FLYING WITH HIM. HE HELD US IN HIS ARMS AND EVERYTHING. WE EVEN BIT HIS HAND. THE NON-METAL ONE. LORD FOLKEN BLOOD; WE DRANK IT."

In other news, this whole thing started off as an idea for a fanart, actually—a moody/sexy shot of Folken taking a bath, with his mechanical arm resting along the side of the tub or something like that. Except I am by no means a fanartist, so I started to wonder if there was some way I could rework the idea into a fic. Except I am rarely one for straight-up introspective pieces, so I somehow needed to get a second character there to play off of him. And since I doubt Folken would have let Naria and/or Eriya help him bathe (he might be clueless, as far as recognizing when someone has the hots for him, but he is _decent_), Zongi it was. (Truth be told, I don't think Folken would be too down with letting _anyone_ help him bathe, as he seems to be a pretty private guy, but for the purposes of this fic, I rather like the idea that, after Folken recruited Zongi, Zongi was like, "OMG, you don't have a manservant, Lord Folken? You should totally have a manservant, Lord Folken, you _deserve_ a manservant, please let me be your manservant, oh please please pretty please!" And because Zongi was like a cute-if-annoying puppy, Folken was eventually like, "Oh, _fine_, you can be my manservant—but _only_ until we find a better use for your unique talents.")

Also, giving credit where credit is due, I feel I should mention jbunyard's fic _Eater of Souls_, as it kind of served as inspiration. Not to say that this fic necessarily follows that fic's head-canon or is meant to be a continuation of it or anything like that, but more that that was the first fic (the first thing, _period_) that made me really start to think about Zongi, and doppelgängers in general. It's hard to really say if Zongi is crushing on Folken here the way Naria and Eriya obviously do in-series, but I think doppelgängers are alien enough and removed enough from human mores to not really care about any potential taboo that might surround same-sex relations on Gaea. (I mean, do doppelgängers even _have_ binary sexes the way humans do? Zongi uses the term "brother" (_"onii-chan"_ in the original Japanese), and I've obviously taken to referring to him as a "him," but it might be more accurate to call the doppelgängers sexless? I mean, Zongi's general body shape might be pretty masculine (if on the slim, lithe side), but we've seen him naked and he doesn't seem to be packing the usual equipment below the waist—which begs the question of how doppelgängers even reproduce in the first place, but I guess that's a meta ramble for another day and another place.) AT ANY RATE, I can see him crushing on a dude like it ain't no thing, so if you want to read it that way, go for it.

Last but not least, thanks for reading!


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